Saturday, January 30, 2016

January, in short


So it's officially winter here - yuck.  I got a few things done despite the cold temps and snow that started to hit the ground in 2016.

It's also been a heck of a month migraine-wise, so I've been trying to feel less guilty about taking time to rest.  In between all of the social events of the holidays and early January, last Saturday was the first time I got to catch up on simply resting.  I'm not good at it, but I try.  Today I'm back at it in the woodshop, preparing for my goal this year which is...

... actually selling things to strangers!  I'll tell you more in a second, but first here's my sort-of-resolution for 2016, something to make my headspace more clear.

I, like many of you, "pin" things on Pinterest like it's going out of style.  Well, I don't pin that many things, I try to keep it under 1500 as I believe a cluttered Pinterest is just as bad as a cluttered basement, and I can't have both :)

SO, I decided that I was going to try and spend some of 2016 actually DOING the things that I had pinned instead of waiting around for next year, or the next, or the next... etc.  If you follow me on Instagram (you really should, www.instagram.com/projectjumanji) then you'll have already seen this (sorry!)

Project #1 - Birch Wreath
We've had a sad (dead) birch tree in our yard for a couple of years now, so it was
high time to give it a new lease on life.  All the greenery is from our yard too
(sidebar:  we have too many plants)

Project #2 - Hide the cutting boards
The pic on the left seems to be from someone snapping it at IKEA
I couldn't find towel bars that worked (sat too low for me) so grabbed some other random
wire rack thing from Home Hardware, bent it into the shape I wanted and voila!

Project #3 - Wire basket
So the pin was simple enough for the mechanically inclined, but alas
the wire mesh I bought wasn't of the highest quality so the lines weren't necessarily
straight and my basket (measured by squares) came out crooked.  Fail = garbage

That's as far as I got with Pinterest this month.  I deleted all of the pins that corresponded to those projects, which felt surprisingly good.  As good as it feels to let go of an old serving dish you haven't used in 5 years instead of keeping it "just in case"... off to Goodwill!

But I did pull out our other serving ware...
Event #...3 - 5th Annual Winter Warm-Up!
We host 15+ folk in our tiny abode for some savoury treats before taking the whole gang to
the Wine & Food show at our local community complex fairground thingy.  It's a lot of
prep-work, but delicious that day... and the next ;)

So what about this "selling to strangers" thing.

Well, I've done some commissioned pieces for the Waugh Woodshop over the last few years, put together the website, and honed my skills a bit.  I'm still not 100% sure of where this'll eventually take me, but I thought I should at least start pointing in some sort of direction.   Where to point... where to point...

A-ha!  The Forest City Flea is a pop-up flea market/antique thingy that just started last year in June and I found out it'll be happening again this June.  I think 4 months (because it's at the start) should be hopefully enough time to get my legs underneath me and put together some items for sale.  Eep!  It sounds like a really dumb idea saying it out loud, but hopefully not.  I'll keep you updated as time goes on, but today I spent an hour and a bit working on an 'inlay' tray that'll be an example of the complexity I can do (commissioned of course) to have on display while there.  I likely won't end up selling this one as the number of pieces and amount of work it'll take doesn't really price out well.  But, here's the start...

I think I'm going to have to go on kijiji to find some old codger who's selling his clamps.
I needed eight for the pieces I was putting together... and could have used at least eight more.
Again, if you want to see progress of this piece, follow me on Instagram, for as you've noticed,
a blog post a month is starting to be status quo around here.

Keep Warm, my Friends!


Posts to your inbox?   That's easy… simply enter your email here:
No spam, I promise, just Project Jumanji Love!


No comments:

Post a Comment